China could overtake the US in war in the Pacific, Pentagon says by

The United States would lose in a maritime armed conflict with China and would have difficulties to stop an amphibious attack on Taiwan, according to a series of war games by the Pentagon.

The war game analysis highlight that Beijing’s stocking of medium-range ballistic missiles has already increased the vulnerable of every US base and any aircraft carrier operating in the Indo-Pacific Command region. For example, the US base of Guam is now considered wholly at risk.

A simulated conflicts war game conducted by the Pentagon concluded that US forces would be overwhelmed by Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Pacific, a US defence sources have told the British newspaper The Times.

One scenario projected on year 2030, by which time the PLA navy would have upgraded its fleet with new generations submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers.

“Every simulation that has been conducted looking at the threat from China by 2030 have all ended up with the defeat of the US,” Bonnie Glaser, director of the China power project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a consultant for the US government on east Asia, reportedly said.

“Taiwan is the most volatile issue because that could escalate to a war with the US, even to a nuclear war,” he added.

The US now perceives China now as the biggest threat to its naval superiority over the seas.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum last week, Admiral Philip Davidson, who oversees US military forces in Asia, called China “the greatest long-term strategic threat to the United States and the rules-based international order.”

Admiral Davidson described Beijing’s rapid military buildup in nearly every domain—air, sea, land, space, and cyber—and said that while China’s capabilities could overtake the US’ within the next five years.

US Defence Secretary Mark Esper has expressed his plans to build the capabilities that the US Navy need to deter China from committing to a major confrontation n the South and East China Seas, the source said.

The US also plans to deploy long-range, ground-launched cruise hypersonic missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.

US Navy amphibious units are also to be armed with anti-ship missiles, along a string of islands enclosing China’s coastal seas.

President Trump announced that the US was developing a “super-duper missile”.

“We are building incredible military equipment,” he said. “We have, I call it the super-duper missile, and I heard the other night 17 times faster than what they have right now, when you take the fastest missile we have right now. You’ve heard Russia has five times and China’s working on five or six times, we have one 17 times.”

US-China relations have deteriorated to their lowest ebb in decades. Washington has intensified its trade war with Bejing, announcing that it would restrict the ability of the Chinese Huawei, which it is considered by US intelligence agencies a “national security risk”, to develop products abroad that use US technology.

US President Donald Trump has called into question whether the US would defend its treaty allies in the Pacific, such as Japan, with complaints about the expense. Admiral Davidson said that “there is no more important American ally in the world than Japan”.

Washington also announced that it had commissioned a company from Taiwan to open a computer chip factory in Arizona to “re-shore” technology industries away from China.

Beijing has hit back, saying that it was ready to put US companies – including Apple – on its “unreliable entity Iist”.

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Matteo Natalucci

Matteo Natalucci is a geopolitics expert working as an Editor in London covering all aspects of international affairs and technology.
Matteo previously worked for the United Nations, the European Commission, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, IHS Markit, and Global Data.
Get in touch with the author: matteo.natalucci@internationalinsider.org